Posts Tagged ‘baseball’

The Twitter Japan blog releases a list of top hashtags for each week. Tweet Beat investigates the buzz behind the hashtag.

Politics could not beat enthusiasm for #猫の恩返し (in English, “The Cat Returns”) airing on Friday night, although Nippon Television and TBS radio’s coverage of the Upper House elections under #zero選挙 and #senkyo954 respectively both made it into the top 20 hashtags of last week.

The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan’s official #日本を取り戻す (“Take back Japan”) was a bit more popular than the demonstration hashtag profiled here a couple weeks ago, #愛国競争 (“patriotism competition”). Meanwhile, boys’ love otaku campaigned under their own hashtag #bl選挙 (“boys love election”).

What came closest to the top spot besides classic anime was baseball. The three #allstar (or the more useful katakana tag, #オールスター) games were played the July 19, 20 and 22.

The first game ended in a 1-1 tie, which left some fans hoping both teams would hit a bit more the next day.

Some fans were touched as Shohei Otani and Yusei Kikuchi played together. They graduated from the same high school (Hanamaki Higashi) a couple years apart. Normally they’re on different teams, but the All-Star game had them together on the Pacific League side.

“Kikuchi and Otani giving each-other five after the other side went down 1-2-3 was cool.”

American indie-rock musician Ben Gibbard has released a song dedicated to Japanese baseball superstar Ichiro Suzuki. Gibbard, who is best known as the vocalist for the groups Death Cab For Cutie and The Postal Service, says he wrote the song in honor of Suzuki years ago but that today was the “best day” to release it to the public — Suzuki, 38, was just traded to the New York Yankees after more than 10 years with the Seattle Mariners. Be forewarned: The song, “Ichiro’s Theme,” is incredibly catchy.

Here are the latest Pulsations, links to fresh stories and visuals about Japan, shout-outs to fellow bloggers, and highly clickable stuff that we think you might enjoy.

In no particular order, they are . . .

On Making Ice Cream Out of Plastic in Japan (from This Japanese Life): Japan is world-famous for its varied cuisine, and pictures just aren’t enough. This Japanese Life goes through the history and production method of Japan’s fake plastic foods.

The end of the line (from The Adventures of a Foreign Salaryman in Tokyo): In an unexpected break, Mr. Salaryman finds himself in a park alongside a homeless guy and another salaryman, who is looking sad. From this, the author draws an extreme conclusion.

Turntable Rider lets bike riders be DJs (from Spoon & Tamago): You know the feeling — you’re riding through Yoyogi Park, doing kick flips on your BMX, but it’s just not enough street cred for you. Why not DJ at the same time? Leave it to the Japanese to make “being cool” more time efficient.

Japanese astrology and warrior robot condoms (from Japan Sugoi): Some people choose their partner based on his or her zodiac sign. Of course, if you go this far, you might as well go all the way and choose your birth control by zodiac sign, too.

Enter the beer salesgirl – in Japanese, biiru no uriko (ビールの売り子). In Japan, “Hey, beer man!” will not only earn you strange looks because you are yelling in English – additionally, no men serve beer at baseball games here. The task is instead performed by young women who wear special backpacks that contain a miniature keg of beer. Dressed in short shorts and team uniforms, they move throughout the stadium seats, serving fresh beer right off the tap to reenergize the hordes.

Japan plays its first match of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, against Côte d’Ivoire this weekend. Although the tournament kicks off two days earlier in São Paulo, for many the Samurai Blue’s opening game ushers in the event, along with the activities that would normally raise eyebrows but get a pass every four years, such […]